


we will taste the islands and the sea

by jane_wanderlust



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-24
Updated: 2012-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-30 02:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_wanderlust/pseuds/jane_wanderlust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And so it continues: a story written under the strangest of duress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we will taste the islands and the sea

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the poem of the same name by Charles Bukowski.

\--------------------

  
  
Halfway through a bad decision already happening, Katherine turned to Stefan, heeled boot balanced precariously over the brake, said, "Okay," and slammed down on the pedal as hard as she had the gas.  
   
She watched Stefan's body as it lurched forward, nylon weaving of the seatbelt tight against his throat, and felt an odd urge to touch her fingertip to the bend in his collarbone. But instead she just tightened her hands on the wheel, jerked her eyes forward again, then peered at Stefan's half-angry, half-intrigued face from the corner of her eye and shrugged in an implication.  
   
"This is when you're supposed to tell me where it is I'm taking you on your escape from hell. Or, you know,  _to_  hell. Whichever, Stefan, I don't mind - or care - but you're irritatingly quiet and I'm bored so..." she trailed off like she started the sentence, not quite a trail, not quite a slam.  
   
Stefan's mouth bent and a crease aside his lower lip dented in. He looked smug; she felt a blurred sense of indignant ire.  
   
"You don't know? Aren't you always the one with a plan, Katherine?" Stefan asked, thumb pressed on the glass of the car window.  
   
"Yes, but I'm also not exactly the one always playing superhero, so this whole saving people from their eminent doom thing is new to me. Give me a little slack here, Stefan. I'm adjusting," Katherine said. She pushed her knuckles to the leather of the steering wheel, sighed out, "Besides, Dudley Doright is more of your thing."  
   
It didn't sound as disgusted as she had meant it to.  
   
Stefan was quiet a beat - two, three - before he breathed in and let out a laugh that owed nothing to humor. The sound escaped through his teeth. "Yeah, well, that's not me anymore," he said, and it didn't sound as certain as she guessed he had meant it to.  
   
Katherine felt a corner of her mouth pinch.   
  
"Liar," she said, and pushed back down on the gas.  
   
\----  
  
They wound up nowhere. Literally. Mountains, trees, a bunch of fucking nothing; with the only source of blood being some questionably large, wood-lurking animals. It felt like a creepy detour in some cheap horror movie. Except for the fact that they were the monsters, and everything else was supremely dull.  
   
She had wanted to go somewhere exciting. Somewhere where she and Stefan could binge on people who wouldn't be missed, slightly maintain the threads of Stefan's humanity, and maybe - just maybe - relearn each other. She had wanted to go somewhere he'd forget; and then remember. Her. Remember  _her._  
   
But as often as she got what she wanted, nothing ever really went her way, so it only made sense that there they were: In the fucking Mecca of nothing, at precisely Nowhere, USofA.  
   
The night stretched on large and vacant in front of her. She plucked at a loose thread on her dress and propped herself against the windshield of the car. Stefan had wandered off in a fit of moody, and Katherine had struggled immensely with her decision to salvage his inner good if  _that_  was going to be the reaping of her rewards.  
   
She swore her life was much more exciting when she was stuck in that God-awful tomb.  
   
A few minutes later, and with not even a rustle of underbrush, Stefan returned as silently as he had left, slid next to her on the hood of the car and propped his hands behind his head. It was all very faux-nonchalance and Stefan-tinted facade. It was all very familiar. Of  _course_ he would be brooding.  
   
Ugh.  _Why was she doing this again?_  
   
She didn't even sigh this time as she asked:  
   
"So then, are you really going to spend our entire road trip extraordinaire pining away for little miss Elena?" she asked, examining her nails in the shiver of moonlight that swallowed the shadows.  
   
"I'm not -" Stefan started, then seemed to think twice about the obviousness of the lie, and tried again. "You wouldn't understand. You  _don't_  understand," he said, fact-checking her intentions as per usual.  
   
"You're right, Stefan. I'm evil. I don't get true love. I love no one but myself. I'm heartless. Vindictive, vile," she said as she listed off his arguments against her like a grocery list. She didn't even spare him a glance, more interested in her cuticles; always more interested in anything but him, she told herself. It was a lie very steeped in antiquity. “Anything I missed?”  
   
Stefan heaved a sigh, turned toward her so very slightly, frowned. She chanced a look in his direction, and almost smiled. He opened his mouth like words were scratching at his throat, and it was all so very  _Stefan_  that she did smile, but it felt more like a lie than she wanted it to.  
   
So she cut him a break, dropped it entirely, spared him the effort and leaned the last few inches toward him, patted his hand, and hopped off the hood. He waited precisely three minutes before he followed.  
  
\----  
   
They wound up sleeping in the back of her car, tangled in a mess.  
   
She laid awake while he slept, and Stefan pulled at Katherine's shoulders no less than three times, dragged her closer each time, and breathed out “ _Elena_.”  
  
She pretended that last part didn't nip at the underside of her ribs.  
   
In the morning she woke up wrapped around him. In the morning she woke up with him curled around her. She sat up and he jostled, opened his eyes widely - wider still when he noticed his surroundings. Katherine just readjusted the strap of her dress, dragged her fingers through her curls.  
   
She smirked at Stefan, at the situation; told him how very high school it was: sleeping in a car.  
   
She pretended to not notice the smile he hid in the bend of his shoulder.  
   
He tried several times to convince her to let him drive, to which she reminded him of the correct ownership of the car (not hers, actually, but…semantics), and of her advantage in age, and therefore, obvious superior driving skills.  
  
Stefan protested each time, spilled out invectives through his teeth.  
  
\----  
   
Each time they stopped for gas it was at the last second – only during night - and every time Stefan bought licorice while Katherine discreetly fed on some random person, in whichever shadow lent itself to her cause.  
   
After she’d her fill – and  _only_  her fill – she let Stefan his turn, and she sucked on red candy strands while she kept a close watch on the level of blood he took. She kept them from dying each time, kept him from killing each time, and then wondered acutely when this had become her life.  
   
She felt like these might be the types of things you did for love; then felt stupid for thinking it, felt stupid for thinking he might even notice, might even care. Felt stupid for feeling stupid, got in the car and moved them to a new city.  
   
It didn’t matter what she said, it didn’t matter how much she  _didn’t_ say. No matter where they where, nor what they were or weren’t doing, she could still feel Elena’s presence haunting Stefan’s gaze.  
   
Stefan never said anything of course – he knew her and her venomous tongue - but he never had to either; she knew him and his traitorous thoughts. Elena was in the whites of his eyes, the whites of his knuckles.  
   
They could run forever, but she’d never be anywhere but at their heels, on their backs. The pressure of Elena’s ghost was _drowning_ her.  
   
And it was all very annoying. It was all very dull.  
   
But sometimes –  _sometimes_  – Stefan would look at her, and his eyes would be clear and his smile would be shameless, and she felt her heart pulling against the whites of his teeth.  
   
And then?  _And then_.  
   
\----  
   
Katherine struggled every state - every mile, every inch - to keep from telling him all the thoughts that picked at her brain. She kept telling herself that despite all of his pitches for “evil,” and despite all of the blood he swallowed, he never really belonged to this; to  _her._  
   
It kept her tongue in her mouth.  
   
She and Stefan stopped trying to decide on a specific location long ago, and their big, wide Unknown stretched out mockingly in front of them, so of course –  _of course_ – they wound up in Vegas.  
   
“You’re a big bad sinner now,” she told him, as she zipped up her dress in the mirror of their hotel room. “Might as well flex your evil in the motherland of sin.”  
   
He dropped his eyes to her ankles, dragged them slowly, slowly, up her legs, hips, breasts. She felt naked, sinful,  _exposed_ , and noted maybe something in him  _had_  changed.  
   
But then he just offered her his arm, all gentility and respect, and she shook off the warming in her toes, and took his arm with a, “Why, thank you, Mr. Salvatore.”  
   
It felt like home.  
  
\----  
   
They got drunk in the casino - Stefan on bourbon, Katherine on whiskey - and gambled most of their money away.  
   
They got bored of Blackjack and compelled some young couple – newlyweds they told them with fresh smiles and batting lashes – into a back corner, and pulled cash from their wallets, and blood from their necks.  
   
As their young newlyweds’ bodies writhed against the wall, Stefan looked at her over the blonde of the woman’s head, his mouth slick and dark, and she couldn’t stop her hand when it rose to his mouth and wiped away a droplet of blood.  
   
She couldn't stop.  
  
His eyes followed her movement, and his pupils blew wide when she pressed the finger into her mouth and sucked. She felt oddly light and hated herself for the weakness of the thought that slid into her head:  
   
 _Where is Elena now?_  
   
\----  
   
In the end, he came to her; not in Vegas, and not for weeks after.  
   
She was painting her toenails on the kitchen counter of their hotel, and Stefan was out, sucking blood from hippies’ necks (they were in Seattle).  
   
She heard his strangely quick footsteps in place of his usually measured pace - everything about Stefan was always so careful, so measured, and that?  _That_  was the truth to the lie of his wasted heart, his spent good - in the hall and he opened the door in an implication.  
   
She took note of the strong set of his jaw; the width of his pupils, and her thumbs had already hooked themselves into the band of her underwear and pulled before he had even spoken: it felt like something she would do;  _should_  do.  
   
That time, he had pulled her closer – more than three times - curled around her, and spoke only her name.  
  
\----  
   
Katherine often got what she wanted – in the end – even if nothing ever really went her way.

 

\--------------------

**Author's Note:**

> For bluesuzanne over at LJ.


End file.
